“Oh, I don’t know,” Susan answered, hysterically. “I don’t. I only knew she couldn’t bear nothin’ like—like lyin’ awake nights gaspin’ an’ fightin’ with awful fear. She couldn’t—she couldn’t.”
“But there are girls—women, who have to bear it,” said Miss Amory. “Good God, who have to!”
“Yes—yes—yes,” cried Susan. She drew her hand across her brow as if suddenly it felt damp, and for a moment her eyes looked wild with a memory of some awful thing. “I told her so,” she said.
Miss Amory Starkweather turned in her chair with something like a start.
“You told her so,” she exclaimed.
Susan stared out of the window and her voice fell.
“I didn’t go to,” she answered. “It was like this. That last time she came to see me—to tell me how ill she was and how Lucien was going to take her away—I’d been lookin’ at the little clothes I’d got ready for—it.” The tears began to roll fast down her cheeks. “Oh, Miss Starkweather! they was lyin’ on the bed—an’ she saw ’em an’ turned as white as a sheet.”
“Ugh!” the sound broke from Miss Amory like a short, involuntary groan.
“She said she didn’t know how people could bear it,” Susan hurried on, “an’ I said—just like you did—that they had to bear it.”
She suddenly hid her face in her arms.